‘Credit card fraud accused wanted to get rich overnight’

The investigators of the American Express credit card fraud case are baffled by the details the probe had thrown up. According to the investigators, the accused — Akshita Attri, 27, Akshay Mishra, Rahil Arora and Joginder Singh — were in the grip of get-rich-overnight syndrome.

The spurt in white-collar crimes has been worrying sociologists and police. Psychologists say there is more to it than a mere case of fraud.

Dr Brahm Sindhu, senior psychologist and head of the District Mental Health Programme, said, “The psychology of the Gen-X that has grown to in their 20’s, are more often influenced by the video games they played for years. In these games, committing crimes such as bank robbery and murder are a fun. Cyber crimes are also the result of this. While working on internet, the youngsters take it as if they are not being watched and committing cyber crime becomes just another computer game for them. During consultation, I tell them that taking escalator for becoming rich can be dangerous as after sharp rise there comes a sharp fall in such cases and therefore take stairs preferably.”

The police said all the accused are educated and belong to rich families. Main accused Akshita is the daughter of a retired senior government official while her sibling sister has migrated to Canada.

She, earlier too, had worked in reputed companies such as Kingfisher and Dell, drawing high salaries.

Akshay, an engineer, worked with Dell and had been in live-in relationship with the main accused. According to Akshita, it was Akshay who had lured her into the fraud. Akshita purchased many consumer durables and luxury items using the credit card details of a UK citizen.

Akshita told HT: “Akshay had been doing this for long and I found it very tempting. He said no one would come to know and asked me to get card details of customers during my stint in CRM Synergies Digital Private Limited. I had access to a lot of credit card details as I worked as customer care executive.”

Inspector Suresh Kumar said, “The parents of Rahil Arora have reached the city from Amritsar. They are unaware of their son’s involvement in the crime.”

Akshita, later, deserted her former live-in partner and started living with Rahil Arora. They were planning to get married soon. Rahil said, “I did not know what Akshita was doing. She once got me a Samsung Galaxy Note, but I paid for it. I had travelled with her to places such as Goa and Jaipur and she foot the bills. She said she was getting good salary.”

The police are probing whether more persons are involved in the crime.

The other two accused —Joginder Singh and Akshay Mishra — are absconding.